development may include homeland security and maritime
interdiction modules.

The ships are intended to fight in enclosed or coastal contested waters, with their abilities optimized by networked,
off-board sensors and weapons. They feature an advanced
networking capability to share tactical information with other
Navy aircraft, ships, submarines and joint units. MPs consist
of mission modules — sensors, weapons and manned and
unmanned vehicles used above, on and below the surface —
operated by special personnel detachments.

The LCS will perform self-defense; high-speed transit;
maritime interdiction operations; intelligence, surveillance,
reconnaissance (ISR) and anti-terrorism/force-protection
missions; as well as support special operations forces and
homeland defense.

Industry teams led by Lockheed Martin and General
Dynamics were contracted in 2004 to build competing designs
for a fast, agile and networked surface combatant seaframe.
The Navy procurement program envisioned purchasing a
number of each design and left open the option that both
designs could proceed into series production. Keys to the original construction program were a fast building time of two
years per ship and a relatively inexpensive cost of about $220
million per hull, exclusive of mission modules.

In April 2007, the Navy canceled its contract with
Lockheed Martin for the construction of LCS 3 after negotiations to control cost overruns failed. The second General
Dynamics ship, LCS 4, also was canceled in November 2007
after similar cost overruns. In the fiscal 2009 budget, the Navy
funded procurement of one vessel of each class and reassigned
the hull numbers 3 and 4, respectively.

To meet cost constraints, the Navy restructured its acquisition strategy in 2010 and announced a competition between
Lockheed Martin and Austal USA (taking over from General
Dynamics beginning with LCS 6) for a 10-ship contract, with
two ships in fiscal 2010 and options through fiscal 2014. In
December 2010, Congress approved an award to both teams
with multiyear contracts to build 10 ships each through 2015.

The Navy had planned to procure a total of 52 LCSs, but in
February 2014 then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered
the Navy to truncate the program at 32 ships and proceed
with development of a frigate-sized Small Surface Combatant
to be based on a modified LCS design. The Dec. 14, 2015, order
to reduce the LCS/FF programs by 12 ships will result in a
total of 40 LCS/FF hulls, and down-selecting to one LCS/FF
hull type by 2019.

Southern Command and U.S. Pacific Command areas of operations in 2010 and a more extensive, 10-month deployment in

2013, operating for much of the year from Singapore, where
the U.S. plans to forward deploy four Freedom-class LCSs.

LCS 2, USS Independence, an all-aluminum trimaran builtby the General Dynamics team, was delivered to the Navy inDecember 2009 and commissioned on Jan. 16, 2010. It pri-marily has been assigned to tests of the mine warfare missionpackage. In a break from the test schedule, the ship tookpart in Rim of the Pacific exercises in and around Hawaii inmid-2014. Independence completed Initial Operational Test &Evaluation in June 2016.

USS Fort Worth was commissioned Sept. 22, 2012, and in
November 2014 began its first 16-month rotational Western
Pacific deployment, during which it operated an MH-60R helicopter and an MQ-8B vertical-takeoff unmanned aerial vehicle
(VTUAV) simultaneously. Its deployment was cut short in
January 2016 because of an engineering casualty. USS Coronado
was commissioned on April 5, 2014, and conducted the initial
operational test and evaluation of the Surface Warfare mission
package in September 2015. Coronado deployed to the Western
Pacific in mid-2016 armed with Harpoon cruise missiles installed
as a measure to increase offensive lethality, and became the first
LCS to deploy with both MH-60S and MQ-8B aircraft.

In September, the Navy announced several significant
changes to the LCS program based on operational experience.
The original 3:2: 1 crew concept — three crews, two ships, one
deployed — was changed to a Blue/Gold concept similar to
that used by the SSBN force, with two crews dedicated to each
LCS. The mission package detachments will merge with the
LCS crews. The ships will be organized in four-ship divisions
specializing in a single warfare specialty, with three deployable
ships and the fourth a dedicated training ship that will remain
in local waters to train and certify the crews. The first four
LCSs will be dedicated to RDT&E and like the training ships,
they will be single-crewed, but could be deployed as fleet
assets if needed on a limited basis.

The Navy also decided to base the LCSs according to
class, with the Independence variant based in San Diego and
the Freedom class in Mayport, Fla. The decision to base the
Freedom variant on the East Coast was a matter of pier support. The Freedom class, due to its size, is a better fit for the
port loading requirements of Mayport.